I’m supposed to start a part-time job, and I’ve never had an actual, regular job; the premise had been terrifying to me since I’ve been 11. It’s been presented to me as a completely impossible feat – every single time I’d try to get a job, I’d get sabotaged.
I’ve been told over and over again that I am incapable of anything, worthless in every sense, unhireable, bound to mess up the simplest jobs, I couldn’t do anything, nobody would hire me, it was impossible for me to work, I was a lost cause, I’d never be independent, or able to survive without family. Once I finally got my confidence up and was 18, I said I’d look for a job, only to get crushed by a well aimed ‘You? What can you do?’ followed with a fit of laughter from my mother. At that point it was enough to destroy any confidence I had spent weeks putting together. I believed she knew the truth about me, more than I did.
Looking back, it feels so insane to think actual parents would repeatedly tell these things to their kid, in a time where a job is the only possible survival for all humans. Were they saying all these things because I truly was, a lost case, the worst most useless person, from the age 11? Of course not. If I had been so utterly incapable, they wouldn’t have to say anything, it’d be their job to help me to get capable, so that I could survive. So why would they fill their very hardworking kid’s head with all this 'you won’t ever get a job and you’re worthless to even try’?
So I could never leave. Because I was next to no cost to be kept alive in their house (they didn’t tell me that, of course, I was told I was a huge burden), and they wanted to have a half-alive scapegoat at home at all times to abuse, to force to work with no credit or compensation, and of course, to keep all of the secrets of what they did to me safe. If I’m in their house, I’m too terrified to tell anyone. Any hint of me feeling brave enough to try to gain income meant I was a step away from leaving so this had to be crushed in the most brutal way possible. But, that’s only half of what they’ve done to keep me from working.
I’ve been working for my parents, ever since I was 6, of course I didn’t know this, it was presented as 'you can’t live if you don’t work’ until I understood I’d do what I’m told, or I will be left for dead. It was all manual labour, I wasn’t allowed to learn a skill. I lost most of my memories of it, because it was accompanied by, well, torture. While working, I was humiliated, screamed at, beaten, injured, forced to do the work with false instructions so I could be punished for it, and of course, at the end I was told that all my work was worthless and it would have been better if I had done nothing. I wasn’t allowed to back out or stop working, because remember, death threats. And it was a sure way to invoke violence, regardless of me being sick, injured, mourning, starving, distressed, devastated. I wasn’t allowed to say no to work. I had no right to live if I did that.
Now that.. left a trace. I could tell, since 11, that I’d be too scared to work for anyone after that. It’s been a lot of years of additional work abuse (child abuse while child is forced into labour under a death threat?) since then, so after all that, I couldn’t work anymore. The mere idea of someone telling me to do something would invoke terror, rage, paranoia, panic, expectation, of violence, humiliation and death threats. I simply had no other experiences for my brain to connect it to anything other than that. Work and trauma became one and the same. I truly became incapable to work. Courtesy of my parents.
At that time I’d already done so much work, I’ve had physical symptoms of a person who damaged their body with work, my back hurt, my muscles were spent and aching, I was spent in my 20s from manual labor like people get at their 70s. Only I had nothing to show for it. All benefits went to my parents. I got broken and barely escaped with my life.
So, I’m still alive now, and I’ve been trying to recover from this for the last 5 years, feels funny when I write it like that, doesn’t it? Decades of abuse, but I expected 5 years would settle this. It wouldn’t, of course.
I’ve received some job training, and my brain was completely blank during it because, it still doesn’t feel safe to be aware of reality in a work-related situation. My brain did the best it could to protect me – and dissociated the hell out of that one. Ever since, I’ve been feeling the effects of work abuse on my body stronger, heavier than before. All my muscles hurt, I’m too exhausted to move, I hear screaming in my head, I have a looming feeling of 'I have to quit or I will die’ and also there’s a voice repeating 'I can’t do this, I’m not capable’ in my head. It sounds and feels bad, it’s actually next to unbearable, but I know my body is doing this to protect me. If I work, even part time, I will get triggered to the decades of abuse, I will be forced to re-live it. I’m not in state of mind that could safely handle this. It’s a risk. If I manage to take this, maybe my brain will somehow, mercifully, create new connections between working and being okay, having financial safety for the first time since I existed. Maybe it can be done. But it will hurt, and it will put me thru hell.
I’m mad they did this to me. Nobody deserved this. In a world where we all depend on a job, to have it be this painful to have one? It shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t destroy me like this. I shouldn’t be put thru this, nobody should. I shouldn’t have had to work as a child to deserve to be kept alive. I shouldn’t have been put thru such traumatic work situations I now find it unbearable to handle. I shouldn’t have my entire organism thrown into panic and death fear at the idea of work. I’m naturally hardworking. I should already have worked normally for years, saved up. If I had been brought up normally, I wouldn’t be in financial stress and poverty, I’d be safe! I wouldn’t be scared of whether I will recover fast enough to survive. I wouldn’t be in traumatic exhaustion. I would be okay.
If you have endured any of the traumatic work situations by the hands of your parents, know that a crime is being committed against you, and the consequences are painful. While underage, you do not need to work to deserve to eat, or sleep, or stay alive. You do not need to suffer abuse while working in order to have human rights. It’s your parents responsibility to provide you with 100% of your resources, and if they claim you owe it to them, they’re lying. They had unprotected sex, they had a kid, it’s absolutely none of your fault, and you do not have to pay for it. Parents do not have the right of exploiting children for work. And when they give themselves this right, it’s abuse.
